I went to my very first frat party the Friday of Welcome Week my freshman year. I had only lived in my dorm for three days, and I went with a bunch of really loud girls who lived in my same hall, whose names I couldn’t remember if you paid me.
Somehow I ended up in an empty alley talking to some tall, blonde girl, who probably looked very pretty at an earlier point in the night. She was slumped on my shoulder as she told me hilarious, crazy stories about “when she was younger”. So of course I asked her how old she was. Her answer, “twenty-one, but that’s basically a grandma in college. I have two grand-littles….. TWO!” Then she gave me some slurred speech about living life to the fullest and so on. I digress.
She did get me thinking though. And since the start of the semester I can’t help but walk around campus and feel old. I mean besides grad students and instructors (please take no offense) we are the oldest!
We don’t know what’s cool anymore. Or what seemingly pointless classes freshman are required to take nowadays. We don’t know if they call things on campus the same thing we do. We can only hope they keep certain legacies alive.
Granted, some things never change. Frat stars will always wear Easter Egg colored shorts and Sperrys. Sorority girls will always be obsessed over the next Lilly print for their organization. Gym rats will continue to dress like gym rats and hipsters will be hipsters. But it just makes me wonder if I stick out… Can they tell I’m a ‘college grandma’? Do I have a different ora about myself? Is it that we have figured out studying is probably more important than beer pong at 2am?
I guess in retrospect, I’m about to feel youthful as ever as I enter the workforce next year. I’ll be the newbie, and here the cycle starts again. So “old” is relative. The process of being young and new to being seasoned and old can repeat itself over and over again as we progress through life. So don’t pour yourself a bowl of Raisin Bran just yet, we still have a lot of youth to live.
And just for a lovely blast from the past, I give you Justin Timberlake:
Weekly Chronicles of a College Senior 